The South Wing

For 26 years Central Park’s Summerstage has been synonymous with “great shows, free!,” and this season’s opener, Josh Ritter and the New York Pops, was no exception. The forecast said rain, but the weather was balmy and sundress-perfect. The Pops warmed up the crowd with a dramatic string intro as Ritter-32, confident, capable and oh-so-gracious-strolled onto the stage, all Eton-schoolboy suit, corkscrew curls and toothy grin. He greeted the crowd-”I’m so excited, y’all”-his twang more likely an auspicious result of his Johnny Cash devotion rather than his birthright from Moscow, Idaho.  A former neuroscience major, the quirky Oberlin student changed to a major of his own devising, American History through Narrative Folk Music, and recorded his first album on-campus. Upon graduation, he did a six-month stint in Scotland (honing that twang), before returning to the States to play open-mics in Providence and Boston.

Sounds like a guy you know, right? Maybe he’s a guy I did know. I lived in Boston, I frequented those open-mic nights in 2002, when a roommate lent me a copy of The Golden Age of Radio, which someone had passed along to her. She didn’t know much about the artist-maybe he’s from Ireland, she said-and when I asked around, his name seemed routinely unfamiliar. But I was in the midst of one of those tumultuous on-and-off long-distance gigs that haunt directionless, somewhat-fresh university grads, and songs like “Come and Find Me” (Every time I see your face/ Bells ring in a far-off place/ We can find each other this way I believe) and the literary ghost-tale of “Harrisburg” (Some say Man is the root of all evil/ others say God’s a drunkard for pain/ Me I believe that the Garden of Eden/Was burned to make way for a train) not only hit their mark, they made me homesick for the endless tracks and furrowed fields of Mississippi. At the time, I considered Ritter a young man who wrote old man’s songs, in the vein of early Dylan or Leonard Cohen. With a little more life under my belt, I now know that despite the Biblical allusions and grimy lyrics, his songs are altogether too clean, his tenor too smooth and conventionally pretty for such wayward comparisons. Ritter has appeal all his own.

As legend goes, the slightly older and more established Irish folk-rocker Glen Hansard plucked Ritter out of one of these open-mic line-ups and whisked him away to the land of Leprechauns, where they recognized him as one of their own (the curls and the grin, maybe?). He returned from Ireland an unassuming star, who, five years later, still seems to be operating under “someone pinch me” mentality. After repeatedly assuring his (new) hometown audience that “this is a dream come true,” Ritter thanked everyone that ever offered him a glass of water. Which was absolutely endearing, and anyhow, it was his parents 42^nd anniversary, so perhaps he was feeling mushy?

Friday’s concert opened with Best for the Best, already a sentimental tune made all the more heart-wrenching by the gorgeous swell of the Pop’s strings-incidentally, the strings were consistently on-target throughout the show, and Ritter’s songs-their pleasing, predictable advances and retreats, were well-paired with the Pop’s gently rolling percussion and the contemplative, thinning light of an overcast sunset.

Which isn’t to say that Ritter didn’t rock out. A Bruce Springsteen for the alt-country set, on songs like “Wolves” and “Right Moves” he employed tongue-in-cheek rocker moves, kneeling at the edge of the stage and good-naturedly pandering to his audience. And for “Come and Find Me,” he brought Hansard onstage and turned the song into a crowd-happy harmonic duet.

But Ritter’s voice is most-aptly placed in melodic ballads, such as “Temptation of Adam” or “Girl in the War”-the latter was everything you could ever ask symphonic-folk to be. The vocals, both buttery and tortured, were superbly layered with darting, winding, climbing strings, steadily plodding guitar and piano, and the occasional horn punctuation. Zack Hickman hunched lovingly over his bass guitar, almost as if they were dancing, but it was more a waltz with the entire stage-a sort of orchestrated ballroom, everyone in perfect tandem.

Ritter’s oft-collaborator Hillary Hahn’s elegant, aching violin was spotlighted in “Thin Blue Flame,” and Columbia prof Mark Strand pulled a crumpled paper from his pocket and read a poem during “Edge of the World.” Overall the concert was entirely satisfying-kudos to the City Park Foundation, kudos to the Pops, kudos to Josh Ritter…and kudos to that kid that let me cut in line, so that I actually made it into the gates this time.

Best for Best

Come and Find Me

Empty Hearts